thomaskay.net

I haven’t been blogging much lately as I am really busy working on my bachelor degree thesis, which is due to be handed in next month.

While looking for scientific papers for referencing I stumbled upon the Cyberguide!! Back in 1997 Scientists were experimenting with a system to provide tourists with an intelligent tour guide device that could give information about nearby sights.

The cyberguide just had one drawback: It was using infrared sensors to detect the current position. So at the site of the demonstration the scientist had hung up regular remote controls with one key taped down so that a unique infrared signal were transmitted.

So much has happened since then. Now we are trying to build a similar application, we are just relying on cellphones and bluetooth sensors.

Reboot is now well over. Before it started I must admit I had my doubts as it was very hard to find an actual topic of the event, there were no real headliners, and the website was terrible and uninformative. But it turned out to be quite a blast.

Most people will probably ask me what I have learnt and if the time and money was well spent. Yes. I met so many great people and heard some very interesting talks. I’ll definately go again next year.

Oh, and the Jaiku backchannel was so much fun.

By the way: It looks like I will be going to RailsConf Europe

Have you ever tried Travian? It is an online strategy game that only requires a regular webbrowser. It is pure xhtml and ajax.

The game is all about world domination, but less can do. You start with a small city that you have to develop, and as it grows larger new buildings and units will be available to you. You must also remember to harvest enough ressources to allow for continued expansion.

To succeed you need to find a couple of allies, everybody else will be your enemies. Trust no one.

And beware, the game is highly addicting.

I’ve just recently discovered StumbleUpon. You install a toolbar in your browser which will supply you with a chance to give any website you visit a thumbs up or down. And then there is an advanced “I feel lucky” feature, that will take you to a website that StumbleUpon thinks is relevant for you.

The suggestions are based on what you have marked as good as well as what your friends have marked. It’s a nice feature and it brings up some interesting stuff, but I just can’t decide whether this is actually useful og just a way to kill time.

I had hoped that StumbleUpon could replace ma.gnolia as I am pretty tired of ma.gnolia and want to find somewhere else to store my bookmarks, but StumbleUpon is much better suited as a simple way to find new interesting websites.

Finally convinced myself to install Mephisto rather than my homebrewn blogsystem. Installation went smooth apart from one thing: What the hell does

DirectorySlash Off

mean? Apparrently it is required to fix som bug in Mephisto, but with the switch set (in .htaccess) Mephisto kept crashing. As I am yet to experience the bug, I guess I’ll just leave out the switch for now.